Traditional design processes like formal crits were built for a slower, larger-scale era. At Cash App, they systematically delete processes that don't add value, finding that many have become performative rituals that slow down high-velocity, AI-powered teams.

To drive adoption, Axios's CEO gave all staff licensed AI access and a simple mandate: spend 10% of your day finding ways it can improve your specific job and share wins. This bottom-up, experimental approach fostered organic adoption and practical use cases more effectively than a top-down directive.

As companies scale, the supply of obvious, valuable work dwindles. To stay busy, employees engage in "hyper-realistic work-like activities"—tasks that mimic real work (e.g., meetings to review decks for other meetings) but generate no value. It's a leader's job to create a sufficient supply of *known valuable work*.

Shift automation from an ad-hoc tech project to a core management responsibility. Mandate that department leads systematically eliminate monotonous tasks, forcing teams to focus exclusively on high-value, strategic work.

To aggressively simplify, hold meetings with the sole purpose of identifying and eliminating inefficient processes, legacy products, or unnecessary meetings. This creates a dedicated forum for subtraction, which is often overlooked in cultures of constant addition and growth.

Instead of using AI to cut headcount, use it to elevate your team. Callan Faulkner requires every employee to automate 70% of their role each year. This shifts them from tactical execution to higher-level strategy and problem-solving, dramatically increasing the company's overall capacity and output without layoffs.

SpaceX's management philosophy centers on clearing friction from engineers' days. The goal is to enable them to spend 10 hours a day on engineering, not two. Management's primary job is to remove bureaucratic 'chaff and crap' so that top talent can focus exclusively on solving hard problems.

OpenAI created a dedicated email inbox for employees to report anything slowing them down. A designated person triages these issues, acting as a "janitorial crew for bureaucracy" to systematically remove obstacles and maintain operational speed as the company scales rapidly.

Bureaucracy is a one-way street; it only grows, often from well-intentioned processes. Leaders must consciously and periodically pause to "declutter" and purge accumulated processes. This intentional effort is necessary because organizations do not naturally debureaucratize and can otherwise become slow and unmanageable.